I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Last year, when Zora was a freshman, sophomores had seemed altogether a different kind of human: so very definite in their tastes and opinions, in ther loves and ideas. Zora woke up this morning hopeful that a transformation of this kind might have visited her in the night, but, finding it hadn't, she did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.

He traced the genealogy of the feeling.

It's not in good taste to have talking ghosts in a grown-up novel.

I'm most honest about writing when I'm talking to family or friends, not to newspapers.

Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.

This, after all, was the month in which families began tightening and closing and sealing; from Thanksgiving to the New Year, everybody's world contracted, day by day, into the microcosmic single festive household, each with its own rituals and obsessions, rules and dreams. You didn't feel you could call people. They didn't feel they could phone you. How does one cry for help from these seasonal prisons?